![\"reiner1\"](\"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/reiner1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nAlex writes about Rob Reiner, specifically his\u00a0string of late 1980s and early 1990s successes.<\/em><\/p>\n Recently, as I was completing the final days of my annual gig trouncing the red carpets of the Toronto International Film Festival, I saw something that interested me. A group of patrons near me were being asked a variety of trivia questions, questions about people that were showing up for the evening\u2019s coming film. On most evenings, these questions were easier than falling asleep during Oliver Stone\u2019s Snowden, but one query got posed that nobody had the correct answer to.<\/p>\n \u201cWhich Rob Reiner-directed film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture?\u201d asked the ringleader.<\/p>\n \u201cStand by Me!\u201d shouted a contestant. No.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Princess Bride!\u201d No.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Bucket List!\u201d Obviously not, you dummy.<\/p>\n This is Spinal Tap, When Harry Met Sally, and Misery were all listed. After a pause, The American President was named (although it never really sounded like that person even believed they could be right). I had been listening in on this whole thing, so I started to go through all the Reiner movies I could think of.<\/p>\n Ghosts of Mississippi. No.<\/p>\n North. Not a chance.<\/p>\n Alex & Emma\u2026 Isn\u2019t that movie about incestuous time-traveling*?<\/p>\n *No. That\u2019s Kate & Leopold, which is a James Mangold film.<\/em><\/p>\n I was stumped. I was among the crowd, scratching my head, thinking the gift of free Lindt chocolate would never be bestowed upon us. Once again, the man with the answers spoke, realizing we were collectively out of ideas.<\/p>\n \u201cThe correct answer is A Few Good Men.\u201d<\/p>\n Everybody groaned. Of course it is. It could not have been more obvious, but I still couldn\u2019t notice it, even though it was staring me right in the face.<\/p>\n As I continued to stand around, waiting for Rob Reiner to show up to promote his latest film LBJ, I began running through that list of answers in my head. I started thinking about Reiner\u2019s career as a whole, possibly for the first time in my life. As a man obsessed with directorial arcs, I somehow never considered Reiner\u2019s, even though he released the following five films consecutively from 1986 to 1992:<\/p>\n All of these films were cultural moments in and of themselves. The least famous of those five movies might be Misery, and even that had a cultural moment of its own. Each of these films feature scenes that still get quoted without relent today, decades later. With the requisite few outliers, pretty much everybody likes these films. They were all hits. They were critically acclaimed, and each of them was nominated for at least one Academy Award. When asking a\u00a0random person on the street about these films, I would imagine the average North American could describe a scene from at least three of them. But what that average person, or what the film-obsessed lunatics like myself never remember, is who directed those films. There\u2019s always something else standing in the way.<\/p>\n In the late 1990s, Steven Soderbergh started a run of five films that I frequently cite as one of the more impressive runs in Hollywood. Starting with Out of Sight and The Limey, he moved on to his Oscar-bait phase with Erin Brockovich and Traffic, before using his newfound clout to play pranks with George Clooney in Vegas while filming Ocean\u2019s Eleven.<\/p>\n I adore Steven Soderbergh. If given the hypothetical to have experienced any filmmaker\u2019s career, his would make the top five, even knowing that I would need to stomach having directed The Underneath. I would never consider Rob Reiner among that top five, not for a second, even once I acknowledge that he also directed This is Spinal Tap.<\/p>\n Rob Reiner has directed six unquestioned classics. And yet when they come up in discussion – even with people that like to talk about the talent behind the curtain – Reiner almost never gets mentioned. In a culture where critics and non-critics such as myself build opinions entirely on who is directing the film, why don\u2019t we discuss this particular director?<\/p>\n As the son of Carl, Rob Reiner has been in Hollywood for basically his whole life. As a twenty-one year old, Reiner was writing for the (by 1960s standards) subversive Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, followed by a successful transition into acting as Meathead in All in the Family (a show that was the most popular show on television for half a decade). After this he made a move into filmmaking, with This is Spinal Tap as his debut feature, beginning his run as perhaps the most notable non-auteur in Hollywood.<\/p>\n By the time Reiner started directing, he was already famous; he had been in Hollywood for almost twenty years, and he had won multiple Emmy awards. Had Reiner\u2019s career ended in 1978, it would have still have to be considered phenomenally successful. He has since directed 19 films, six of which are well-remembered classics. Reiner might be the most successful modern(ish) director we never talk about.<\/p>\n When looking for a shared theme among Reiner\u2019s films, the simple thing to point to is that there really isn\u2019t one other than the fact that each is about human beings. These are all relatively simple, entertaining movies. Reiner has never attempted to make anything byzantine like Memento; his most expansive film is probably North, which plays like a movie for drunk children. When watching any of Reiner\u2019s films, there is no discernible style to attach to them; each film (with the exception of the stylistically inventive Spinal Tap) looks pretty much exactly how films of its time period looked collectively. If you need a Hollywood time capsule for 1992, look at A Few Good Men: the only (brief) action sequence is shot with hilarious orange-boosting filters and absurd music, and the movie features Demi Moore in a prominent role. Nothing jumps out as inventive, but nothing jumps out as bad either. But watching any one of Reiner\u2019s other films does not give you much to link to A Few Good Men; Misery looks and feels totally different. In each of Reiner\u2019s films, the shots are relatively simple, and the visual language of film isn\u2019t all that complicated. Reiner is but a man with a camera, making movies as he sees fit, and what is seen fit by his eyes is often not all that showy.<\/p>\n The most obvious common trend in looking through Reiner\u2019s career is that, in his most notable works, he is surrounded by filmmakers who are more famous than he is. This is Spinal Tap \u2013 a failure upon its initial release that has since turned into, well, Spinal Tap \u2013 has retroactively been turned into a Christopher Guest movie. Stand by Me and Misery are both seen as Stephen King movies, and in the case of the latter, Kathy Bates\u2019 entertaining performance dominated any post-screening discussion of the film. Even watching Misery today, I couldn\u2019t help but think \u201cWell, I guess this is how Stephen King thinks about fandom*,\u201d even though I watched the film to specifically try to read Reiner\u2019s thesis. Like with many of his other films, Reiner blends in so well that you want to talk about others instead, even when your goal is specifically to try to talk about Reiner himself.<\/p>\n *Whereas in other cases, specifically The Shining, I never think about Stephen King. When I think about that film, I exclusively view it as a Stanley Kubrick film that King happened to provide the genesis for, even though King is more famous than Kubrick.<\/em><\/p>\n When Harry Met Sally was written by Nora Ephron, and it felt like such a script-based film that Reiner\u2019s contributions are now mostly ignored critically. Ditto for The Princess Bride, written by a post-All the President\u2019s Men William Goldman. A Few Good Men was written by newly-minted playwright superstar Aaron Sorkin. In discussions of all of Reiner\u2019s movies, the talent listed first never seems to be Rob Reiner. In the case of A Few Good Men \u2013 simultaneously Reiner\u2019s most critically and commercial successful film \u2013 he might rank fifth (or sixth if the person you\u2019re talking to happens to love Kevin Bacon).<\/p>\n Which almost self-imposes the questions: is Reiner actually a talented director? Or merely smart enough to stay out of the way of other incredibly talented people?<\/p>\n The first question is obviously idiotic. Lightning doesn\u2019t strike twice, let alone six times; ipso facto, Rob Reiner is talented. The answer to the second question is also yes, which might be a talent in and of itself.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n\n
<\/a><\/p>\n